Popular quotes about Ethics! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The modern Gamaliel should teach ethics. Ethics is the science of human duty. Arithmetic tells man how to count his money; ethics how he should acquire it, whether by honesty or fraud. Geography is a map of the world; ethics is a beautiful map of duty. This ethics is not Christianity, it is not even religion; but it is the sister of religion, because the path of duty is in full harmony, as to quality and direction, with the path of God.
David SwingI understand the chairman of the Senate Ethics comittee is going to examine the check-bouncing scandal with a microscope. ...makes sense... If you're going to look at ethics in Congress, a microscope is what you need.
Jay LenoFaith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment. . . . And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good. . . . This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics.
Sam HarrisMost people don't have any association in their minds with what they do and with ethics. They think they somehow moved past the questions of morality or values or ethics, and that's something that I've never imagined to be true.
Cathy O'NeilI do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others.
Albert EinsteinI confess to being something of a philosophical butterfly. The world is full of so many interesting questions, and although my greatest passion is for some form of applied ethics, that leaves me with oodles of possibilities, many of which I have never had the time or opportunity to explore in great depth.
John KleinigThe characteristic feature of all ethics is to consider human life as a game that can be won or lost and to teach man the means of winning.
Simone de BeauvoirThe very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is โdoingโ his โEnglish prepโ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.
C. S. LewisWhat is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.
Oscar WildeScience cannot stop while ethics catches up ... and nobody should expect scientists to do all the thinking for the country.
Elvin C. StakmanAltruism demands that an individual serve others, but doesnโt stipulate whether those others should be oneโs family, or the homeless, or society as a whole. Collectivism states that, in politics, society comes first and the individual must obey. Collectivism is the application of the altruist ethics to politics.
Andrew BernsteinEthics are complete, profound and alive only when addressed to all living beings. Only then are we in spiritual connection with the world. Any philosophy not representing this, not based on the indefinite totality of life, is bound to disappear.
Albert SchweitzerAll the dry ethics of the world turn to dust because apart from God they are lifeless.
Mahatma GandhiYou may have practical ethics and that kind of thing, but there is no spirituality in any aspect of our Western civilization. Our religious life is ethical, not mystical. The mystery has gone and society is disintegrating as a result.
David KudlerFor some days I quietly worked out in my own mind the metaphysics of Cosmic Unity. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it was the living truth. It was logically incontrovertible. It provided for the first time a firm foundation for ethics. It offered mankind the radical change of heart and mind that was our only hope of peace at a time of desperate danger. Only one small problem remained. I must find a way to convert the world to my way of thinking.
Freeman DysonMorality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves... Nevertheless... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction... and any deeper meaning is illusory...
Michael RuseOne reason for the decline in moral values is that the world has invented a new, constantly changing and undependable standard of moral conduct referred to as "situational ethics." Now, individuals define good and evil as being adjustable according to each situation; this is in direct contrast to the proclaimed God-given absolute standard: "Thou shalt not!"-as in "Thou shalt not steal".
David B. HaightCommon sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.
Thomas NagelThe mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.
Albert SchweitzerI stared at her in amazement. "How do you even live with yourself?"..."You're willing to sell children to a foreign government so they can be used as weapons, possibly against other Americans. I don't get it. Were you hiding behind a door on morals and ethics day?...You couldn't mother someone if they shot five gallons of estrogen into your veins.
James PattersonIn ethics, we don't make progress by discovering pre-existent truths; we do so by solving problems.
Philip KitcherAs for the ethics, law, and politics relationship, there has always been a tension for me as I try to keep them distinct while recognizing their interactions. A valuable contribution to my thinking there and elsewhere was Ellen Meiksins Wood's Mind and Politics, which reinforced for me the ways in which seemingly disparate philosophical endeavors were/are interconnected, and although I have tended to give a certain priority to ethical considerations as part of practical reasoning, I am reminded often enough that this position makes some contentious presumptions .
John KleinigThus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology.
Christopher DawsonRepentance is replete with radical implications for a fundamental change of mind not only turns us from the sinful past, but also transforms our life plan, ethics, and actions as we begin to see the world through God's eyes rather than ours. That kind of transformation requires the ultimate surrender of self.
Charles ColsonWhen you see your fellow religious man, don't call him brother; but when you see a man of honour, a man of goodness, a man of peace, a man of ethics, now you can call him as your brother!
Mehmet Murat IldanA leader whose speech is prepared by others is not a leader; he is just an empty and stupid bottle! Use your own ideas and your own brain; write your own speech, just like Gandhi, Churchill or Nehru! That is indeed a good ethics and a good honour!
Mehmet Murat IldanI think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them anyway!
M. Night ShyamalanWe have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.
Vivienne WestwoodDivorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.
James MacGregor BurnsGreat readers, great listeners, and all have great work ethics. ... They work hard at what they do and they're devout to their reading and listening.
Andy WilkinsonThe real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
Albert Einsteinphotographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.
Susan SontagIf you want to find out how strong a company's ethics are, don't listen to what its people say, watch what they do.
Elizabeth WarrenIn literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.
Charles BaudelaireHumanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.
Bertrand RussellYou cannot have a boundary-less existence, because your neighbor has his own boundaries, and who is going to give you the ethics between the two boundaries? If there is no objective moral law, relativism will take hold, and relativism ultimately will lead to self-destruction.
Ravi ZachariasEvery flower of the field, every fiber of a plant, every particle of an insect carries with it the impress of its Maker and can-if duly considered-read us lectures of ethics or divinity.
Sir Thomas Blount, 1st BaronetNotice that "I" is at the center of the word "ethical." There is no "they." Achieving the ethics of excellence is our individual assignment.
Price PritchettWe have also set up the national institute for ethics. This institute and also the implementation of the national integrity plan, that will certainly do the follow up that is necessary for this.
Abdullah Ahmad BadawiYou can't put someone else in charge of your morals. Ethics is a personal discipline.
Price PritchettI think that Google has definitely influenced my moral values and the ethics. I think when Larry Page started the company, they weren't in it for the money. They started it because they really wanted to create something that; one, they wanted, and two, they thought was going to change the world.
Anne Wojcicki